Janez Stanovnik

Janez Stanovnik (4 August 1922-31 January 2020) was President of SR Slovenia from 1988 to 1990, succeeding France Popit and preceding Milan Kucan.

Biography
Janez Stanovnik was born in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia on 4 August 1922, the son of the deputy mayor. In high school, he became an active Christian socialist, and he was imprisoned by the Italian occupiers from 1941 to 1942 during World War II. Upon his release, he joined the Yugoslav Partisans and became a communist in 1944. He rose in the ranks of the Slovenian communist party following the war's end, and he became an economics professor during the 1950s. In 1988, he became President of SR Slovenia, and he used his position to negotiate with the opposition groups; he supported a peaceful transition to parliamentary democracy, and he was nicknamed "Father of the Nation" as a result. He was active in the Social Democrats after the Breakup of Yugoslavia, and he died in 2020 at the age of 97.